


Played

by objectlesson



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Attempted Seduction, Bad Flirting, First Time, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-03
Updated: 2015-12-03
Packaged: 2018-05-04 16:57:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5341592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/objectlesson/pseuds/objectlesson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s only after Napoleon's rather mortifyingly blatant fourth attempt at seduction that he starts to worry that something might truly wrong with him. By this point, most people catch on. </p>
<p>Napoleon is beginning to understand with increasing clarity that Illya is not most people.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Played

**Author's Note:**

> This story is one huge, huge mess of Russia jokes and Cold War jokes. I blame it on Star Trek.

It’s only after Napoleon's rather mortifyingly blatant fourth attempt at seduction that he starts to worry that something might truly wrong with him. After all, it has never taken this long before to garner _some_ type of response from one of his marks. Usually a lip busting kiss, or a dress torn violently over the head. Occasionally, if he has sorely misjudged the situation, he’ll get a firm, open palmed smack on the cheek, or have to duck a flying handbag. Regardless, by the _fourth_ attempt, _something_ has happened. Most people catch on. 

Napoleon is beginning to understand with increasing clarity that Illya is not most people. 

Illya has neither bust open his lip, nor struck him with a handbag. Illya has done absolutely _nothing_ in response to Napoleon’s none too subtle suggestions that he might want something more from him. But hitting on Illya is like hitting on a wall. Actually, it’s like hitting on the _Berlin_ wall. Never in his life has Napoleon experienced something so solid and impenetrable and _foreign_. 

The first few times Illya misses it might be understandable. After all, Illya does not pick up on subtlety very well, nor does he have any sense of humor to speak of, and Napoleon usually approaches men he wants to fuck with a combination of guarded innuendo and half-jesting implications, just in case it blows up in his face and he needs to pass the whole thing off as a joke. However, it all probably went right over Illya’s head. 

But the third. The third time was so excessive and obvious Napoleon doesn’t have any idea what Illya _thought_ he was doing if not very clearly and shamelessly trying to get under that infuriatingly tight turtleneck of his. They had been working at busting open an antique suitcase in search of some very important documents given to a Turkish Ambassador on his Grecian holiday, when Illya pricked his finger on the rusted snaps. Napoleon watched it bleed; a tiny, spherical pinprick of blood rising to the surface of Illya’s finger and spreading to pool under his blunt nail. 

“Ouch,” he told him, raising an eyebrow. “Shame you forgot those gloves.” 

Illya glared harshly at him, eyes cold and blue. “Shame _you_ forgot those gloves.” He jammed his bleeding finger into his mouth. Just the tip of it, up to the first knuckle, but Napoleon’s eyes still widened, his stomach still flickered with the uncomfortable heat of having to spend an inordinate amount of time around someone he wanted to punch at least half as much as he wanted to fuck. Someone who refused to even _notice_ the latter. 

“Goodness, Peril,” he said, feeling bold. He grinned triumphantly as he finally managed to undo the snaps on the suitcase. It sprung open, and he glanced sidelong over his shoulder at Illya, making sure to keep his voice heavy, charming, suggestive as he asked, “are you practicing for something?” 

Illya sucked on his finger, staring hard at Napoleon like he had no idea what he was talking about. “What,” he grumbled with no question mark, lips moving around his broad joint, eyes quizzical and clueless like he was half-sure he’d just been insulted. Napoleon watched, stunned. He was feeling a little crazy. 

Sighing, Napoleon brandished a satin kerchief in hand so he could carefully remove the documents in question from the suitcase and replace them with decoys. “Practicing,” he said, slower this time, slipping the papers into his briefcase. Then, with the conviction of a man who has just made a very bad decision, he looked Illya square in the eye and smoothly, slowly, slid his middle finger into his own mouth. 

Again, Illya stared. Stared like the Berlin Wall, if the Berlin wall could stare. “The cut is on the _tip_ ,” he explained prudently, pulling his finger (spit-damp, almost puckered) out past his lips and brandishing it inches from Napoleon’s face like he was a stupid child. “See? What are you even doing. Your hands are probably filthy. Because _you_ forgot the gloves. Stop.”

“The cut is on the tip,” Napoleon snapped, feeling very stupid. “Of course.”

\---

The fourth time may have been even more obvious. It also might have been even more obviously a failure. They were supposed to be heading to a seaside cafe to meet Gaby, who was keeping an eye on their ambassador while he met with a colleague at noon. As usual, Illya was very concerned that Napoleon’s extensive getting-reading routine was going to make them late. 

“You take longer than Gaby,” he observed, arms crossed as he leaned against the doorframe and sighed dramatically. 

“I should hope so, I certainly look better than her when we go out. Here, hold this,” Napoleon draped his suit jacket over Illya’s shoulder, using him as a coat rack since he was certainly tall enough to be one. “How does this oxford look? I want your honest opinion,” he asked him, standing in a pale lavender dress shirt which was decidedly and deliberately open to reveal his chest. He cocked an eyebrow at Illya, hoping that if the guarded innuendo and half-jesting implications didn’t work, maybe putting himself on display might penetrate the Berlin Wall. 

“It looks unbuttoned,” Illya told him. 

Napoleon’s face fell. “I was asking about the _color_ Peril. The color. How does it look?” 

Illya made a face that suggested he did not particularly care for pastels. “You look like an Easter basket. But that color is apparently very popular among cheap taststless tourists this summer, and you’re supposed to look like one. So it’s fine.” 

“Thank you,” Napoleon said smugly, although he was not feeling very smug on the inside.In fact, as he buttoned the shirt and fastened his cufflinks and thought about Illya’s eyes, which were not burning holes in his apparently no longer irresistible back as they should be, he started to feel a little panicked. Why was Illya not hypnotized by his chest hair? Why was he not plagued with daydreams about the way Napoleon’s finger looked palm deep in his mouth, the way Napoleon’s daydreams were plagued with his? Why hadn’t they fallen into bed together in a fury of muscle and sweat? Something more drastic had to be done, clearly.

He smoothed his hair and sidled up to Ilya, standing very close as he carefully removed the jacket from its makeshift human coat rack, making sure his touch brushed across the span of Illya’s shoulders in the process. “I have another very serious question for you. You must answer truthfully; I will certainly be able to notice if you don’t, and take proper action.” 

Illya narrowed his eyes. “Fine.” 

“Do you find me attractive?” Napoleon asked, eyes hard and hopefully unreadable. They were standing only a few, tense inches apart, and although Illya looked somewhat uncomfortable, he didn’t move away. Which was a good sign, Napoleon thought, although the Berlin Wall didn’t move away if you stood too close to it, either. 

“Solo,” Illya scoffed. “What kind of question is this.” 

“I already told you, a very important one,” Napoleon said suavely, licking his lips. “Now. In your opinion, am I attractive?”

Illya rolled his eyes. “ _You_ seem to think so.” 

“But I’m asking what _you_ think,” Napoleon shot back, eyes locked on Illya’s and their Iron Curtain of terrible, beautiful blue. 

It was at that moment that Illya placed one palm firmly on the center of Napoleon’s chest and pushed him away like a dog. “I think you seem to have no issue finding someone to take to bed every might, so you must be attractive.” 

Refusing to be defeated, Napoleon grabbed Illya’s forearm, keeping his hand there on his chest, the warm weight of it just over his heartbeat. “That’s not even close to an answer. You’re going to have to try harder than that.” 

Something very scary slid across Illya’s eyes, a strange darkness like ink spreading in clear water, and Napoleon actually _saw_ the tiny muscles in his jaw tighten up in poorly concealed anger. It was a little terrifying, but not as much as it was turn on. Napoleon wanted all that, he wanted Illya’s strength and his madness and his sheer, crushing ferocity, so he wasn’t going to let a glimpse of it stop him. He dug his thumb into the tight, hard line of Illya’s wrist, nail cutting in between two tendons pulled tight, but Illya wrenched away fiercely, eyes flashing and pupil black. “You honestly want to know?” He spat, putting his hands on his hips. 

“Yes.” 

“Yes?”

“ _Yes_.” 

Illya gathered himself and ground out, “I personally think you you look too _American_ to be attractive. ” 

Outraged, and possibly a little hurt, Napoleon threw up his hands. “Is there such a thing as looking too American?! At least I don’t look like a the personified version of _sputnik_ , at least I’m not ten feet _tall_ \---”

Napoleon’s tirade must have cost him all his dignity, because Illya no longer looked angry, the well of violence inside him was no longer threatening to boil over. In fact, he looked downright _amused_ , the smallest of smiles quirking his mouth up at the corners. “Well _you_ , cowboy, look like the Lone Ranger. It’s all I can think of when I look at you, that you should be wearing a hat and riding a horse and saying _yeehaw._ ” 

Napoleon glared at that infuriating smile in all its cool, effortless understatement. He wanted to punch it off Illya’s face. With his mouth. Which he supposed was the same thing as wanting to kiss it very roughly until all stupid complacency was wiped clean off those perfect lips. He sighed. “Is that really what you think? That I should be saying yeehaw?” 

Illya nodded, reaching forward to adjust the collar of Napoleon’s shirt in a very condescending fashion. “Yes,” he assured him. “And that you are going to make us late. Come.” 

Internally grumbling and agonizingly confused, Napoleon did. 

\---

He would give up on the whole seducing-the-Berlin Wall thing if he was _sure_ Illya doesn’t reciprocate his interest. But unfortunately, Napoleon _isn’t_ sure. His seduction attempts had certainly been failures. This is indisputable fact. _But_ for each of those failures exists handful of confusing moments or exchanges which make Napoleon wonder if he could be wrong about something, make the dying embers of hope in his chest flicker back to life and ignite into some new and usually absurd plan. 

After all, Illya is a spy, just as Napoleon is. It’s possible that he’s just very, very hard to read, and very, very good at keeping a poker face on in the feat of anything potentially uncomfortable. After all, it’s not as if Illya doesn’t send signals of his own, sometimes, however infrequent and confusing they may be. 

For example, Illya rarely, rarely gets drunk in Napoleon’s presence, but the few times he has, he actually softens around the edges, like a hunk of St. Petersburg ice left in front of the fire, melting a bit at the corners until it is lightly less cold and sharp and horrible. He talks more, slurs his words a little, gets too close too Napoleon’s face sometimes and puts his hands place he would _never_ in the daylight, on the small of Napoleon’s back, his shoulder, the back of his neck. All in fleeting, moments, wuick enough they could be passed off as accidental, but there all the same. 

One memorable time, he _slings an arm_ around Napoleon’s shoulders and _keeps it there_ , breath hot and damp against Napoleon’s ear as he steers him from the bar back to the hotel. Napoleon spends the walk half-hoping Illya’s drunk, half-dead weight doesn’t crush him to death if he stumbles, but also half-hoping he _does_ end up on top of him by the end of the night, somehow. 

On another significant evening, Napoleon gets jumped on his way back from a rendezvous with an anonymous informant in Florence and barely escapes the assault with his life. He staggers back to their hotel bleeding and throughly concussed and also worried he might have lost his favorite lapel pin, knocking messily on Gaby’s door, dripping crimson onto plush carpet and wondering if he should go back to look for than pin in the gutter. After all, it was a gift from one of his army buddies and he _really_ likes it. 

It’s Illya who opens the door, holding a drink he almost drops when he sees Napoleon in his muddy suit with right eye swollen shut. Gaby appears in seconds over his shoulder, exasperated as she drags them both in to the room before depositing Napoleon onto the couch in a puddle of clumsy limbs. While she tends to Napoleon’s wounds in a practical and effective way, (dumping the ice bucket into a cloth napkin and instructing him to hold it over his eye while she disinfects the rest of him), Illya does something Napoleon can only describe as _hovering_. Hovers closely and nervously and awkwardly, all ten and a half feet of him crowding Gaby as she works, so much so she has to keep shoving him out of the way and throwing elbows in his general direction to encourage him to back up. 

At one point Gaby takes a break from feeding Napoleon whiskey so that she can stomp off to the bathroom to bring back a fresh wash cloth to continue wiping Florence street grit from all his wounds.In her absence, Illya sits upon the couch beside Napoleon and leans down into his space, huge hand cupping his cheek gently as he thumbs over his split lower lip, his bruised cheek. If Napoleon’s head wasn’t aching so spectacularly, he might have thought of something better to say than, “are you going to lecture me, _professor,_ ” which doesn’t even make sense and isn’t half as flirtatious as he intends to be. He swallows thickly, sprawled out on the couch in his dirty, ripped suit, basking under the perfect warmth of Illya’s examination, his rough but tender hands. 

“No,” Illya says gently, which is a surprise. “Though you are incredibly reckless and somehow manage to jeopardize every mission at least once.” 

“Good job not lecturing me,” Napoleon sighs, wincing as Illya’s thumbnail scraps against his stinging skin. “Gold star. A plus.” 

Illya chooses to ignore him, still leaning too close, still hanging over like the Berlin Wall about to topple over. The consequences would be at least as catastrophic if he gets any closer, Napoleon thinks. “Does it hurt?” Illya asks, peering at his swollen eye with a concerned line through his brow. He leans a half a centimeter closer and Napoleon’s heart stops; for a moment he actually, actually thinks Illya is going to _kiss him on his bleeding lips_ before a few breaths pass between them, and Illya shifts ever so slightly out of his orbit. 

“Not too bad,” Napoleon lies, swallowing thickly, heart still pounding. “Just a scratch. Nothing much. I’ll be bedding Florentine women by tomorrow, just watch me. Girls love a wounded warrior,” he adds weakly, wincing through his headache. 

And then everything changes. Illya’s eyes get glass-hard again and he sits up, as stiff and tall and soviet as ever. “I’m sure you will,” he say crisply, and maybe it’s the concussion talking, but Napoleon finds the whole shift in demeanor to be somewhat suspicious. A very Cold War indeed, Napoleon thinks, reaching for his glass and downing another shot of whiskey, blinking until the room blurs. 

It’s moments like these that make Napoleon feel like there is something more to Illya’s denial and apparently cluelessly, something more dangerous, more complicated. Just because Illya is strange, and stoic to a fault, and terrible dense, and doesn’t understand flirting, and thinks Napoleon looks like the Lone Ranger, doesn’t necessarily mean he’s a complete lost cause. He could want to fuck Napoleon as much as Napoleon wants to fuck him, despite most evidence suggesting otherwise. It’s possible. He does, after all, get very handsy when he’s drunk. He did, after all, put his fingers all over Napoleon’s broken lip. It could happen. Stranger things have.

\---

Napoleon decides that the only way to know for sure is to cease his seduction attempts, however obvious, and just go right for the throat. It was probably the Russian way, after all, and Illya was not very good at doing anything unless it was unapologetically Russian. 

They’re playing chess; they’ve had a few drinks. Gaby is on a solo mission and Illya and Napoleon have been doing a lot of this, just spending quiet, companionable nights together as friends, and it seems as good a time as any for Napoleon to quit with the games and offer a proposition of sorts instead. He’s pretty sure Illya won’t try and kill him if this goes sour, which is as much of a green light as he’s ever going to get.

“Want me to top you off?” He asks, gesturing to Illya’s empty glass. 

“No,” Illya answers, eyes fixed on the chess board. 

Napoleon shrugs, sloshing some vodka into the glass anyway. “Oops,” he says. It wins him an irritated flick of Illya’s eyes, just a momentary flash of blue until they’re back to on the game. Napoleon sighs dramatically, then slouches back onto the love seat. “Will you quit obsessing over that damn board for a second. I need to ask you something.” 

He must sound grave, because Illya actually does it almost without complaint. He glares at Napoleon critically, brow creased with concern, jaw set tight. He looks fucking absurd. Like sputnik. Like the Wall. So serious, so stoic, so _sexy_. Napoleon wants to throw him onto the back of his horse and ride off into the sunset, he wants to say _yeehaw._ It’s ridiculous, and he really has to do something about it or at least accept that there is nothing to be done and move on, so he cocks his head and says, point blank, “Can I kiss you?” 

Illya’s eyes widen and his cheeks color. Very minimally, but it’s there, the tiniest crack in all that St. Petersburg ice. “Excuse me?” he says after a moment, voice very, very even. Too even. 

Napoleon sits up, resting his elbows on his knees, searching Illya’s face for that crack so he can force his fingers into it, melt the snow, dig deeper into the blood and soil and fire underneath; he knows it’s there, he _knows_. “You must have realized by now how often I consider it. I’m merely _asking_ like a gentleman. So. To repeat myself, even though I’m certain you heard me crystal-clear, _May_ I kiss you?” 

Illya shakes his head. Then he stands up, eyes flashing and something near his pulse twitching and Napoleon might have been wrong about the trying to kill him part.Before he has time to consider if he’s supposed to fight for his life or not, Illya is upon him, In a feat of superhuman strength, he fists into Napoleon’s shirtfront and hauls him to his feet, spinning him around and backing him into the wall. “If the answer’s no we don’t _have_ to fight,” Napoleon says weakly, stumbling backwards until Illya slams him into the door, the wrought iron knob jabbing him in the ribs as he struggles. 

“No,” Illya says thickly, licking his lips, pressing his brow into Napoleon's so solidly it convinces Napoleon that maybe this is not the threat of death, maybe this is something else, something entirely. The thing he wants, even. “We do not have to fight, cowboy. And you may not kiss me. Because I am going to kiss you.” 

And so he does. He grips Napoleon’s chin firmly and crushes their mouths together, a kiss full of teeth and tongue, a kiss that’s more of a bite than a kiss until they break apart panting, Napoleon’s lips stinging as Illya licks messily over him. He holds him tight up against the wall, rough hands palming across his back, ass, thighs, rucking his shirt up out of his trousers so he can find skin. And thank _god_ , Napoleon is not broken, something is not seriously wrong, he _is_ still irresistible and all is right in the world. He sighs into the kiss, shoving Illya off him and backing him towards the bed, heart pounding in anticipation at the miles and miles of muscle and golden skin and terrible tension he has to break into, all the ice left to melt. _Yeehaw,_ he thinks, grinning in triumph.   
\---

When its over they lie side by side panting, Napoleon’s hair a absolute mess, his back a map of stinging red trails, his stomach still in wonderful, shuddering knots. Illya is jammed up against him, too much man for too little a bed, legs bunched and tangled awkwardly as he lays there in silence drawing idle patterns in Napoleon’s chest hair with his finger tips, eyes half-lidded and thoughtful.

“I’ve wanted that for a very, very long time,” Napoleon admits after a while, feeling too sated and doped up on adrenaline to pretend he was anything other than desperate, to pretend he didn’t nearly break his back bending for this. 

“I know,” Illya says quietly, voice muffled against Napoleon’s shoulder. “I have, too.”

Napoleon narrows his eyes, reaching up to drag and hand through Illya’s hair, rucking it up in back since it looks entirely too neat, even after all that they’ve done. “Oh really,” he says. “Then how come you didn’t _do_ anything about it? How come you didn’t fall to your knees and beg for me? I was pulling all the stops, Peril. I performed fellatio on my finger in the middle of a mission. I _exposed my chest to you_ like a girl at the Moulin Rouge and asked if you found me attractive. I was wearing my heart out there on my lavender sleeve. You have the coldest shoulder I have ever encountered, my friend.”

Illya shrugs. “I don’t like games.” 

“You don’t like games,” Napoleon repeats, thinking of all the chess they have played and feeling like there might be something more to this statement. “Hm. So all the flirting, all the tension, all of the lingering glances and heart palpitations and batted lashes...do nothing for you? You’re more of a throw a man up against the wall and tongue fuck his mouth kind of guy.” 

“Or,” Illya offers, eyes getting dark as he looks hard at Napoleon, heated and gut-wrenching, “A wait-until-he-can’t-stand-it-anymore guy. You’re very compelling when you think you have nothing to lose. Very, very compelling on your knees. Wanted to see how low you’d go for it, since you were so willing anyway.” 

Napoleon’s stomach drops very, very hard, and he swallows. He thinks about all the people he’s played, all the marks and seduction and manipulation and espionage. And then he thinks about how very unsettling and magnetic it feels to be the one played, in return. There are few people who have had such power over him, even fewer who wielded it so delectably. Again, his stomach drops. 

Illya does not seem concerned; he kisses up Napoleon’a pulse, licking deep into it, chewing tendons, and Napoleon wonders if this is a game, or something more. Or if it’s just a dangerous game, the kind that’s too hard to win. He’s not sure he cares, because it feels too damn good to quit now. “Well,” he murmurs, stunned. “I’ll admit. You got me.” 

Illya nods curtly before leaning down into another deep, searing kiss, and Napoleon could be wrong since he’s not totally fluent in Russian, but he thinks that the nod might have said, _you got me, too_.


End file.
